Australian inventor, Pat Jones, was inspired one night after taking his “tinnie” out for a little fishing. Trying to bring his boat back to shore, he was fighting heavy winds and choppy water, but he made it back safely.
It was the next morning when he took out the floor to clean it that he realized his boat had no flotation in it. Had it flipped, his boat would have sunk. That experience lead him to become an entrepreneur, reports ABC Sunshine Coast.
Nothing like a scary moment to bring on a new invention called the Kapten Boat Collar – But safey aside, the boat fender surrounds the bow of the dinghy, also acting to reduce damage to the tinnie and the vessel it’s moored to.
“I’ve spent most of my life building and designing aluminium and steel boats; and we lived on a boat for eight years so we’ve got a lot of experience… I couldn’t find a product that had all those qualities – so I made it,” says Pat.
Pat says six years of research and development went into getting the concept just right.
“It’s made from a closed cell polyolefin foam – More and more boats capsize every year in Australian waters, so the collar provides the stability for small craft that’s currently lacking.
Screenshot from Kapten Boat Collars